The Book
by Kirasel
Summary: "HP reads HP". There's an odd book sitting in the corner of Harry's cupboard. It's got his name on it.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Anything you're probably looking forward to will be most likely be in the chapters after this.

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There is a boy sitting a swing at a deserted playground. There's no one else around, really, mainly because the sun's starting to set and all the other children have gone home. There's just a boy, sitting on a swing, with skinny knees and an oversized jumper. Did he mention scotch-taped glasses? Yes. Scotch-taped glasses. He's… ten. Is he sure? He's not exactly great at remembering things. His birthday is July – all right, yes, he's sure he's ten. Just checking. Always, always important to check.

Look up. Look down. Left, right, dead ahead, twist around to look behind him, and just to be really safe, he looks up at the sky. Nothing. Blue, clouds. Birds. It looks a crow. Or maybe it's a hawk. He can't really tell, but it's definitely a bird of some type.

There's still no one around.

Good.

Carefully, he stepped out of the swing and ran. Though, now that he thought about it, it might have been a good idea to walk, so he'd still have some energy left when he got to what he liked to call The Neighborhood, a series of identical, perfectly painted and treated houses. There are lots of cars and pots and bushes to hide in and behind. He didn't want an ambush. That would mean another round of Harry Hunting. Not particularly pleasant.

If you haven't guessed by now, this is Harry Potter. Scrawny, short little body, with bright green eyes too big for his head and knobbly knees. He also sported messy, uncontrollable black hair, that tended to break combs and other hair-taming tools unless he was being careful. He was always careful. All right, sometimes careful. Maybe careful? Careful at times. Yes, that seemed to fit well. He also happened to own ten pairs of socks, a jumper, five shirts, and five sets of trousers. Oh, and a set of trainers, and a slightly too big coat. And, for what he thought was his most attractive feature, a lightning bolt scar, slightly off-center on his forehead and normally covered up by his fringe.

Actually, it isn't that the scar is particularly pretty in and of itself, as it was technically a discoloration caused by healing an injury. He just liked the shape, really.

Anyway, our protagonist was quickly and surely making his way to number four, Privet Drive, which he called The House, or if in a somewhat happy mood, Home, located in The Neighborhood. Nothing distinctive about it. Maybe with a prettier lawn, or a shinier car, or somewhat cleaner pavement – of course it would be, Harry made sure of that. But all in all, practically identical to the other houses in The Neighborhood. Normal and boring. Except for one thing.

That one thing would be Harry of course. Harry knew that he was the one thing that prevented number four, Privet Drive from being like the other houses. After all, one of Uncle Vernon's favorite subjects to complain about was Harry, and while rambling on about that, Vernon _would _go on about how freakish and un-normal Harry was. Harry was used to it, really. At last, Harry reached the house with the slightly prettier lawn and shinier car, with the brass number four shining in the light. Quickly, he carefully wiped off his shoes and ran for his cupboard. Only when the door closed behind him did he relax and flop onto his bed.

If you didn't know, Harry lived there. His very own room, the cupboard under the stairs. It was rather cramped. The small bed (with a slightly lumpy mattress) took up most of the space inside, but there was still room for a few shelves, spiders, some clothes, spiders, a small stool, spiders, Harry's few belongings, and spiders. Harry was rather used to spiders. There were rather a lot of them. What there wasn't a lot of was light. Even at the best of times, Harry could still barely make out whether that thing he was grabbing for was a sock or a cobweb (he normally grabbed the cobwebs and spent an unpleasant time trying to wipe his hand off on a somewhat moth-eaten coat).

So it wasn't very surprising, when, instead of grabbing his pillow, there was something else in his hand.

What was surprising was that the something else in his hand wasn't a cobweb, or a coat hanger, or a detergent of some kind. Harry pushed his round glasses further up his nose and squinted, like he did rather often inside of the dark, cramped cupboard. It was something thick and heavy and had an odd papery feel around the edges –

Ow! Papercut!

…Oh. Paper. _Paper. _It was a _book. _Harry stared at it for a few moments. (Well, to be more accurate, he was staring at the oddly colored lump in the darkness, since it wasn't too obvious it was a book at the moment.)

A… book?

Harry had read books, but he'd never really read as much as his curiosity would allow – he was, after all, some sort of delinquent, and the teachers never really let him alone with a library book without keeping a very, very close eye on him. He personally found that disturbing after a few minutes, so he'd left that alone. But what was this? A phonebook, or a dictionary, maybe. Though Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon never touched the cupboard, and anyway, if they had stuffed something in here, he would have known about it. Maybe they were trying to clean up after dinner? Yes, maybe there were some excess books that Dudley would never deign to have in his room, so they shoved them here instead?

Harry frowned. Well, it seemed to be a very nice book – heavy, but about as thick as a storybook, so hard cover, which meant it _had _to be expensive, and, from what very little he could see, it had some illustration painted on. The letters that the cover had were even raised, and glinted… gold? Gold was nice. It reminded him of tacky ads and adverts, but it was nice, and spoke of money and…and… shiny things. He didn't see why they wouldn't just leave it out. After all, since it _did _have an illustration, it would have been pretty enough say, "Oh, it was a gift," or "It does make a rather nice decoration, doesn't it?" There was no point in shoving something like this in his cupboard.

There was a crack under the door that let in more light than the rest of the cupboard had. Harry huddled near it, book in hand, and placed where there was _just _enough light to make out the golden letters –

_Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. _

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A/N:

Skip this if you don't like rambling, because I really want to ramble right now.

Another plot-bunny. I probably should have written more, but I was too impatient to wait until I had another chapter done. Yes, I know that's the worst thing ever. Future chapters will be longer.

I read these fics where they get a book, and then they spend all day reading the book and nothing happens. So here's my take on it. Or... you know, something that _will _be my take on it. I'll update this... sometime... or, well, not at all, if no one's interested. Or if I get too bored with this.

I'll do my best to stay to British English, unless I've gotten much too used to something. Like, lemon drop. I've gotten so used to that, that sherbet lemon sounds weird. I don't understand why they had to change that, since I had no idea what a lemon drop was when I first read that book. In fact, I had no idea what a lot of words were when I first read that book, so they could have just kept the entire thing in British English and I wouldn't have known the difference. My point is, go ahead and correct me if you think I've made some obvious glaring mistake.

And I can never decide on genres, so I just stick everything into General. Oh and T for... is this T? Or is it just K+? Ah well, safe than sorry.

I'm probably not going to take myself very seriously when writing this.

Oh, and if you made it this far - wow, you must really want to be thorough.

This A/N is far too long...


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